Nick Lodolo is ready to take the next step in his rehab and is moving up to join the Double-A Chattanooga Lookouts for his second start. Four days ago he pitched two innings of shutout baseball while allowing a hit, walking no one, and striking out four of the seven hitters he faced out in Phoenix while pitching for the Arizona Complex League Reds. He threw 22 pitches during his outing.
The left-handed starter last pitched for the Reds on May 6th against the Chicago White Sox. That day he allowed three runs on six hits – including two home runs for the fourth consecutive game – and threw just 3.2 innings. After the game he was diagnosed with calf tendinosis in his left leg and placed on the 15-day injured list. About a month after that an MRI revealed that he also had a stress reaction in his leg.
Cincinnati is expecting Lodolo to throw three innings or 50 pitches in Birmingham where he will join Chattanooga this evening. The game is at 8:05pm ET and is available to watch on MiLB.tv – which is now included as a part of MLB.tv if you wanted to follow along. It will be the first start for the Lookouts for Lodolo since July 29th of 2021 when he wrapped up his time in Double-A and was promoted to Triple-A to end that season.
While it doesn’t seem like the lefty will take the full 30 days he’s allowed to have on a rehab assignment, he does have through September 9th before the club would have to make a decision on what to do. He’s eligible to return before that date if and when he’s deemed ready to go. Lodolo is on the 60-day injured list and currently does not count towards the 40-man roster. Once he’s activated, though, he will count and the club will need to make a corresponding move for both the 26 and 40-man rosters.
Go slow with Lodolo.
Yes – no need to get him up to starter’s limits – 40-50 pitches and multi-inning relief/opener role is fine to finish the season.
Nah. There’s nothing wrong with his arm. 50 pitches tonight; 60 on the 20th; 75 on the 25th or 26th, and a start for the Reds heading into Labor Day weekend. The Reds wouldn’t be rehabbing him, if they didn’t believe his leg was healed.
Lodolo needs some work to be ready for next year, too. Else, he will only be able to throw about 100 innings in 2024.
We know it’s not his arm that’s the problem, but mechanics.
Glad you’re not in charge. 😉
He’s not a rookie…next year should be fine.
He’ll likely be on the IL at some point again, so worrying about innings limits is a distraction.
I’m guessing tonight and 2 more starts after that before coming back and that’s it there’s no setbacks.
So excited to see a rotation of:
Ashcraft
Greene
Lodolo
Abbott
Williamson
Obviously it will be changed, not sure you want to righties and three lefties in that order, but this is a good group of kids.
I would like to see Lively kept on as a long reliever and depth piece. It is not like the Reds do not suffer lots of injuries with the pitching staff. Weaver, however, can go back to AAA and try to work things out.
i agree, i think the starting pitching is there to make a run if not this year, at least next year. Now , will the position players be productive enough to go on a big winning streak to get us into the playoffs?
Yes. It will be cool if/when that happens.
Luke Weaver’s pro days are numbered…
I’m not sure I understand the “go slow” bit. 80 or 90 pitches is not going to hurt this kid. We all know that’s par for the course with David Bell and many other managers now days, when it comes to starters.
+1
A reminder that Lodolo’s problem is not arm/elbow/shoulder but leg. As long as he is not having leg pain let him go 90 pitches or so.
Leg issues will lead to arm issues because you favor one leg over the other and throw off your motion. Even if leg feels good there may be weakness and no reason to chance it. Has that every happened to you? Up twist and ankle or something and the next think you know your hip is sore on the other leg, haha. Best to go slow here and make sure he gets through these starts with no pain. Not just during the start but in the days after.
But the Reds are already doing all that, Moon. They know that a pitcher’s legs have to be solid, which is why the put him on the IL and identified the problem the way they did. They’ve taken their time to ensure that the leg is healthy.
These guys are ball players, not Faberge eggs. The Dodgers aren’t having any pearl-clutching sessions with Walker Buehler, who is recovering from an actual serious arm injury (TJ) and is hoping now to start games in September.
The Reds knew Lodolo had a leg issue in ST.
“Pitching through it” led to compounding the injury.
Folks here were blowing off Stephenson’s broken collar bone.
“It’s not a big deal.”
And India’s PF.
RLN medical experts, one and all.
I didn’t see anybody blowing off Stephenson’s broken bone. Do we really know whether his injury last season affected his performance this season, or instead is Stephenson just not very good, considering that his MiLB stats were fairly mundane?
Nobody is suggesting that any Red play through a disabling injury. With Lodolo, though, there is no reason not to let him try work himself back into the starting rotation.
Forward progress. It’s a good thing for the next few years.
I’m willing to bet that the Reds medical staff who actually see and are monitoring Lodolo’s progress know more about the situation than someone who posts comments on a blog board.
You would think so, but then you’d think the professional baseball evaluators could’ve figured out Mike Minor was never going to earn 1/10 of $10/mil year or that this organization has better options then Luke Weaver. You’d think?
The Mike Minor deal is kind of interesting. On March 14, 2022 the Reds unloaded salary by trading Jesse Winker (2022 & 2023/ $14.5M) and Eugenio Salazer (Remaining contract through 2024/$33M). Two days later the Reds traded Amir Garrett for Mike Minor (2022/$10M). The only starting pitchers moved in March before the season started and after the Minor deal were FA’s: Michael Pineda (2022/$5.5M) and Zach Greinke (2022/$13M).
WAR for 2022:
Minor -0.4
Pineda -0.4
Greinke 1.9
I guess it can be debated if Cincinnati even had access to Greinke given his history with KC. Pineda gave the same value but at a lower cost… It looks like by the time the Reds had capital to work with before the ’22 season, it was slim pickings and it could be argued losing Garrett was addition by subtraction. If this is the apex of disastrous trades by the Reds over the NK era, I can live with it..
Maybe….like they did with Lodolo in ST when the problem first arose.
Or with Lively.
Or with Antone after TJ1.
Or with India’s PF.
After all, they are ‘experts’.
“Taking it slow” is such a radical suggestion on RLN.
Lineup posted. Cleveland is starting Logan Allen (LHP):
Newman – 3b
McLain – 2b
De La Cruz – ss
Steer – lf
Ramos – dh
CES – 1b
Fairchild – cf
Stephenson – c
Hopkins – rf
Saw that line-up. A little puzzled with some of the names, given the day off yesterday and the one on Thursday.
Like others, I’m thinking there’s a 40-man crunch coming on very soon.
Yep. Bell doubling down on RH hitters. A person would think with the off days being what they are the currently best catcher both behind and at the plate would catch both games between the off days.
We will get Friedl and Benson into the game when an RH pitcher comes on for the Guardians. The guess here is that Steer will come in to 3B; and, either Fairchild or Hopkins will remain in for the duration.
The question that is begged by me is that with Ramos being a switch hitter, does Votto get the call when a Rh pitcher faces the DH slot??
Leading off for the Cincinnati Reds
# 28, Kevin Newman…. Newman
This lineup is David Bell going totally handsy with a lefty starting for the Guardians. Sorta surprised that Friedl isn’t playing, as he has pretty good splits against left handers. And now, Hopkins gets to play, and his timing is probably really off after sitting so much since his recall.
Freidl used to have a good OPS split versus LH pitching but since July 1, it is .546 which has pulled his seasonal OPS vs LH pitching down to .737
So at one point, they are going to have Stuey/Ty/Hopkins/Newman all batting consecutively. That should make for a good Reds Rally. And just think of the mid-innings that those 4 will be affecting.
Maybe I can reverse jinx it?
Bell couldn’t set a decent line up if he only had 9 players to choose from.
I highly doubt Weaver has any option years left
He does not. He can agree to a AAA assignment, but I doubt he would do it, because the Reds have to pay him anyway and will not offer him a 2024 contract. I suppose that he might agree to go to Louisville to try again to be a reliever, with the hope that he does well and somebody notices.
Weaver will be a non-roster invitee to spring training somewhere next year. He is clearly on the cusp of returning to the real world.
Are you sure he can reject an outright and still be paid? In most cases, when a guy rejects an outright assignment, he forfeits his remaining salary.
I think the rule is that once the player gets 5 years of service time, the player has have no options and can reject an outright assignment. If they could have sent him to Louisville, then you would think that they would have done it earlier.
As I said somewhere else, they could agree to say he has a sprained ear and put him on the IL, after which he would go to Louisville on a rehab assignment to sharpen up for a bullpen role. That seems unlikely, though.
The most likely thing to me is that the Reds determine that Hunter Greene is healthy following his start tonight or tomorrow, and they DFA Weaver, out of mercy if nothing else.
You know, Weaver was a top draft pick for the Cardinals back in 2014.
The most innings he has ever pitched in the Majors was 136 for the Cardinals in 2018. He is 30 years old, and likely does not have any options left.
He just isn’t that good….period. And really never was. His presence, along with Luke Cessa as a starter on the team at the beginning of the year, is a testament to how weak the Reds starting pitching has been this year. Not much of Lodolo or Greene, who were expected to at least pitch 150-170 innings.
Where would the Reds be without Andrew Abbott?
Made me think who is going to start Saturday? I had hoped it wouldn’t be Weaver but Greene instead. Did Greene get in his latest rehab start last night? If they are waiting until tonight, that doesn’t portend well for either Greene or Ashcraft for Saturday. If I can figure this out, they certainly can. These games are important that I would think we would ensure….. with the proper planning …..that we don’t have to use Weaver again this year. Sometimes these guys don’t seem like they have a clue.
No MiLB games on Mondays.
Greene pitched on August 10 (61 pitches), and he should pitch again tonight, although that is not posted yet and he may go Wednesday night. Either way would have him ready to face the Angels in Anaheim on June 21, which would be Weaver’s turn.
June 21st? You’ve got a time machine?? 😉
I know, you meant August 20th, actually.
August 21st I hope?
Yeah, that would be pretty strong to time-machine some Hunter Greene starts back for a couple of months. Krall would need to get his Strat-O-Matic cards out.
I was asking about Saturday August 19th. That seems like that would be Weavers turn. Thursday is an off day. I was making the point that I hope we have Greene setup to go Saturday. Pretty silly not to have planned that way rather than have to rollout Weaver or some other undesirable.